


Sleep Is For The Weak

by the_passionate_sun



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Vet!Isaac
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_passionate_sun/pseuds/the_passionate_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hello?” Isaac asks, not fully paying attention.</p>
<p>“Did I wake you?” Cora’s voice filters through the phone. “I’m sorry if I woke you, it’s just...Alpha. I’m worried about him again, it’s like he’s twitching and he’s drooling and he won’t stop moving and I think there’s something wrong with him.”</p>
<p>Isaac is off the couch and moving towards the front door before she’s even finished her sentence. “You have a golden retriever, right?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, I know all the stories, Isaac, I just don’t know what to do.”</p>
<p>“Okay, hold on, I’m coming.”</p>
<p>He’s at her place in ten minutes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep Is For The Weak

All things considered, Isaac and Cora Hale aren’t really friends. He knows her, of course, he’d met her almost ten years before, nearly six months after joining Derek’s pack. They’ve fought together, they’ve sparred each other, and they’ve been a part of each other’s lives for almost a decade now. 

Even when he’d left Beacon Hills for college, for vet school, he’d seen her during pack meetups. It’s not as if she should be a stranger to him, yet that’s exactly what she is. They’re not friends. They don’t talk much to each other, and truthfully, he knows next to nothing about their life now. The tentative friendship they’d upheld in high school was almost completely gone now, to the extent that he was surprised he still had her number.

Isaac was even more surprised that Cora had his, and that she was calling him at two in the morning. 

“Hello,” he answers. “Cora?”

“Yes, Isaac, oh my God, I think Alpha’s dying.”

“Wait, what?” he asks, pushing himself up. “What happened to Derek?”

“What? No, not Derek. Alpha, my dog. You’re a vet, right?”

Isaac sighs, checking the time on his bedside clock. He shoves the covers off with one hand, sticking his phone between his shoulder and his ear as he gets out of bed. “Yes,” he rolls his eyes. “I am a vet. Now tell me exactly what’s happening to Alpha.”

That is the story of how it begins.

 x

Four days later, Isaac is up late watching The Hobbit on DVD. It’s the second movie in the trilogy, although he doesn’t understand why it’s a trilogy, considering the book wasn’t that long anyway, but he’s not complaining. Evangeline Lilly is pretty hot as Tauriel, and that’s the excuse he’s going to use if anyone catches him watching.

When his phone rings, it’s 1:30 am. Isaac blindly searches around for the remote on the couch, and, not finding it, decides to just answer the call anyway. 

“Hello?” Isaac asks, not fully paying attention.

“Did I wake you?” Cora’s voice filters through the phone. “I’m sorry if I woke you, it’s just...Alpha. I’m worried about him again, it’s like he’s twitching and he’s drooling and he won’t stop moving and I think there’s something wrong with him.”

Isaac is off the couch and moving towards the front door before she’s even finished her sentence. “You have a golden retriever, right?”

“Yeah, I know all the stories, Isaac, I just don’t know what to do.”

“Okay, hold on, I’m coming.”

He’s at her place in ten minutes. 

There’s not much he can do for her dog except check him out and then tell her to bring Alpha to the clinic the next day, but he ends up staying for the rest of the night anyway. Cora, he finds, is a very talkative person. It’s not a trait she shares with her brother, but he remembers enough from what he learned about Laura Hale to realize that Derek’s sisters are very much alike. 

Still, this doesn’t mean that the light in her eyes isn’t tempered with a deep-rooted sadness that has nothing to do with her dying dog. Those nine years she’d spent doing god knows what, and Isaac still didn’t know, they’d taken a toll on her. Cora had spent a whole decade recovering, and even now, during the best of times, he sees her slip into those memories. 

“Hey,” he says, snapping his fingers in front of her face. “Drink your hot chocolate.”

Cora rolls her eyes at him and scoffs, lifting her mug up from the kitchen island. “Shut up, Lahey,” she says before taking a sip, eyes meeting his from above the rim of the mug. “It was nice of you to stay.”

Isaac shrugs. “I didn’t really have anything better to do.”

“No?” she asks, raising her eyebrows at him. “Nothing? Not even, you know, sleep.”

“Sleep is for the weak,” he says. Still, he stifles a yawn behind the back of his hand. 

“Sleep is for the week,” Cora corrects him. “You have a job to get to in the morning, you should get some rest.”

“Now you’re worrying about me getting sleep? Where was this concern an hour and a half ago when you woke me up.”

“My dog was having a seizure,” she tells him matter-of-factly, slipping off the stool to put her empty mug in the sink. “Are you done?” 

“Are you going to do the dishes right now,” he asks, searching for a clock. He finds one above the stove. It reads 3:42 am. “At four in the morning?”

“Two mugs isn’t much,” she argues, already running them through with a sponge. He waits until she dries them and puts them away, because he doesn’t know where she’s planning on letting him sleep. “Follow me,” she says. 

Cora points to the couch, and raises her eyebrows right back at him when he gives her an incredulous look. 

“I have to sleep on your couch?” he asks. 

“Well you’re sure as hell not sleeping in my bed,” she tells him, handing him some blankets and a pillow. “You’re tall, but you’ll fit on the couch, Isaac. It’s really comfy.”

It _wasn’t._

**Author's Note:**

> I've somehow managed to get very attached to Isaac and Cora, both individually, and together. So, this is one of many AUs that I've come up with during my late-night TW feels-attacks. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!


End file.
